Lothar H. Vallon, Andrew K. Rindsberg & Anthony J. Martin

Annales Societatis Geologorum Poloniae (2015), vol. 85: 527–528. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.14241/asgp.2015.014

THE USE OF THE TERMS TRACE, MARK AND STRUC TURE

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Geomuseum Faxe (stsj³llands Mu seum), stervej 2, DK-4640 Faxe, Den mark; e-mail: kv@oesm.dk 2

Dept. of Bi o log i cal & En vi ron men tal Sci ences, Uni ver sity of West Al a bama, Livingston, AL 35470, USA; e-mail: ARindsberg@uwa.edu

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De part ment of En vi ron men tal Sci ences, Emory Uni ver sity, At lanta, GA 30322, USA; e-mail: geoam@emory.edu

Vallon, L. H., Rindsberg, A. K. & Mar tin, A. J., 2015. The use of the terms trace, mark and struc ture. Annales Societatis Geologorum Poloniae, 85: 527–528.

Ab stract: Mark, trace and struc ture have been in con sis tently used in ichnology for many years; we wish to clar ify the or i gins and to pre scribe cor rect us age of these terms. The or i gins of the words are an cient and com plex; in the twen ti eth cen tury they were given clear def i ni tions as ichnologic terms. Seilacher (1953) de fined a mark (Ger man Marke) as a phys i cal (abiogenic) sed i men tary struc ture, as in the com mon terms sole mark, flute mark, but not bite mark or scratch mark. Trace has been de fined many times; we rec om mend the con sen sus def i ni tion of Bertling et al. (2006) as “a mor pho log i cally re cur rent struc ture re sult ing from the life ac tiv ity of an in di vid ual or gan ism (or homotypic or gan isms) mod i fy ing the sub strate”; this in cludes dwell ing trace, feed ing trace, bite trace. Struc ture, as im plied in an other con sen sus pa per (Frey, 1973), is a neu tral term for geo logic pat terns re sult ing from ei ther biogenic or abiogenic pro cesses. Use of the three terms in a clear con sis tent man ner will aid com mu ni ca tion both among ichnologists and be tween ichnologists and their col leagues in other fields.

Key words: Ichnology, ter mi nol ogy, mark, trace, sed i men tary struc ture. Manu script re ceived: 14 October 2014, ac cepted 18 February 2015

A few of us ichnologists had a ban ter ing dis cus sion on the “Ichnology” Facebook group at the be gin ning of 2014. Un for -tu nately, this remarkable dis cus sion with its nested commen-tary was untraceably de leted due to restructuring of the group’s page. Still, we feel it is im por tant to make this dis cus -sion avail able to a broader au di ence be cause we have no ticed a trend to ward mis use of the well-de fined terms mark, trace and

struc ture in some re cent pub li ca tions. In par tic u lar, the in cor

-rect phrases bite marks and scratch marks seem to be all too pop u lar in ver te brate and in ver te bratere lated ichnologic pub -li ca tions. As pointed out by Ekdale et al. (1984), the struc tures de scribed in these ar ti cles were clearly pro duced by liv ing or -gan isms, and there fore should be called bite (or bit ing) traces and scratch(ing) traces. Sim i larly, striae made on the walls of bur rows can be called bioglyphs (= in di vid ual sculp tural el e -ments; Bromley et al., 1984), or col lec tively as bioprint (= the sum of all in for ma tion that can lead to the iden ti fi ca tion of a tracemaker; Rindsberg and Kopaska-Mer kel, 2005), or scratch

or na ment. It seems that nei ther au thors nor re view ers are aware of the cor rect use of terms.

Ichnological ter mi nol ogy, in fact, de vel oped over a pe -riod of de cades and in more than one lan guage. Adolf Seilacher (1953) is cred ited, and right fully so, for es tab lish -ing the sci en tific par a digm in which we work, but he did not work in a vac uum. Ger man palaeontologists al ready had a long his tory of work ing on trace fos sils; one of them, Krejci-Graf (1932), endeavoured to stan dard ize the terms used for ichnology and Seilacher adopted sev eral of these terms and con cepts. Their ac cep tance among French- and Eng lishspeak ers was ac cel er ated by cor re spon dence be

tween Seilacher and Lessertisseur (1956), and by the en thu si as tic ac cep tance of Seilacher’s work by Eng lish re search -ers such as Simpson (1957). But the first edi tion of the trace fos sil sec tion of the Trea tise on In ver te brate Pa le on tol ogy (Häntzschel, 1962) con tained lit tle dis cus sion of terms.

A cru cial step was taken when the young Rob ert W. Frey (1971) am bi tiously at tempted – in a field trip guide -book! – to stan dard ize ichnologic terms and con cepts in the Eng lish lan guage. This trial was fol lowed by a pe riod of in -ter na tional cor re spon dence – by “snail-mail”! – in which he de vel oped a list of equiv a lent Eng lish, French, and Ger man terms, aided by Hans-Erich Reineck, Günther Hertweck, and Jacques Lessertisseur. The manu script of “Con cepts in the Study of Biogenic Sed i men tary Struc tures” was cir cu -lated among 33 re search ers in 12 coun tries for com ments be fore pub li ca tion. Re view ers in cluded KrejciGraf. Pre vi -ously, the ter mi nol ogy of ichnology had de vel oped par tially and in de pend ently in dif fer ent lan guages, but this would never be the case again. Häntzschel (1975, ta ble 1) re peated Frey’s (1973) ter mi nol ogy with mi nor mod i fi ca tions, and most of these terms re main stan dard.

Still, Frey (1973) missed an im por tant con cept. With his em pha sis on biogenic sed i men tary struc tures, he neglec- ted to give a brief, gen eral term for sed i men tary struc tures that were not made by or gan isms, which he called phys i cal

sed i men tary struc tures. But the com mon Ger man term

Marke (pl. Marken) had al ready served well for this pur pose

for sev eral de cades (Krejci-Graf, 1932), in clud ing

Runzel-marken, which is still used for de scrib ing wrin kle marks.

tu nately not of Spur, “trace,” which in cluded phys i cal sed i -men tary struc tures made by mov ing ob jects, e.g., rainprints and gas-es cape struc tures. Marke or Eng lish mark in the strict sense as it is used to day, was de fined by Seilacher (1953: p. 423) in his ground-break ing work “Studien zur Palichnologie” and re in forced by Rich ter (1954: p. 103).

Ac cord ing to the sem i nal def i ni tions by Krejci-Graf (1932), re in forced by Rich ter (1935), Reineck and Singh (1973), Ekdale et al. (1984: p. 309) and the con sen sus reached by a ma jor ity of ichnologists dur ing the first two Work shops on Ichnotaxonomy, sum ma rized by Bertling et al. (2006), the terms trace, mark and struc ture are de fined as fol lows:

Trace: “A mor pho log i cally re cur rent struc ture re sult ing

from the life ac tiv ity of an in di vid ual or gan ism (or homotypic or gan isms) mod i fy ing the sub strate” (Bertling et al., 2006: p. 266). The word has been used more or less in this mean ing in Eng lish since about 1400 AD (Barnhart, 1988: p. 1156). It could also re fer to a dirt path. Be fore that, tracen meant “to tra verse, pass over, tread,” as bor rowed from Old French

tracier or trasser, ul ti mately from Latin tractus, “a track or

course.” The orig i nal mean ing from which tractus is de rived would have been “to draw,” i.e. as a horse draws a car riage.

Track, trail, train seem to be dis tant rel a tives of trace that

took dif fer ent et y mo log i cal paths into Eng lish.

Mark: “Non-biogenic struc ture pro duced by phys i cal means, as in ripplemarks or death marks (thus, for ex am ple, it is in cor rect to re fer to bite traces as 'toothmarks'” (Ekdale et

al., 1984: p. 309). Krejci-Graf (1932) de rived the Ger man

term Marke from mediaeval Ger man merken = kennzeichnen, which may be trans lated into Eng lish as “to mark, to in di -cate” or even “to stamp (some thing) on,” and in the fig u ra tive sense also “to re mem ber” (“Mark my words!”). How ever, a trip to a cou ple of et y mo log i cal dic tio nar ies (Par tridge, 1963: pp. 381–382; Barnhart, 1988: p. 634) shows that the mean ings and or i gins of the word mark are com plex in both Eng -lish and Ger man. Mark can be a limit or bound ary, with the Latin cog nate margo mean ing much the same, and re sult ing in Eng lish mar gin. Re lated words in clude march, as in “the Welsh Marches” or bor der lands and mar quis or mar grave (the no ble in charge of a march). The Indo-Eu ro pean root may mean some thing like “cut” or “di vide.” In the long run, mark (the limit) be comes mark (the sign in di cat ing a limit), and fi -nally mark (the sign it self). But there is also an other Ger manic word, *mark, mean ing a “pledge,” that has come to mean a “sign” in sev eral lan guages. (The as ter isk, *, in di cates a form that is not at tested in writ ing, but has been re con structed from later forms.) In Eng lish, we have a pri va teer’s let ter of marque, the doc u ment that al lows a pi rate to seize the ves sels of a ri val state. Two words have col lapsed into one.

Struc ture: The word is de rived from structus as past

par ti ci ple of the Latin struere, mean ing “to pile, place to -gether, build, as sem ble, heap up, ar range,” etc. In ichnology

struc ture is used as a neu tral term for pat terns in geo logic

ma te ri als, in case one does not want to pro nounce whether some thing has been pro duced by liv ing ac tiv ity or by purely phys i cal forces. To avoid rep e ti tion in a text, ad di tional words can be used, e.g. biogenic struc ture as a syn onym for trace fos sil, or ero sional struc ture as a gen eral term in clud -ing flute marks and other sole marks (cf. Frey, 1973).

As ichnologists we, like any other group of sci en tists,

need clearly de fined terms in or der to com mu ni cate. The terms

trace, mark and struc ture are clearly de mar cated terms and we

have to use them ac cord ingly. We there fore hope with this ar ti -cle to raise aware ness of the cor rect use of ichnological terms.

Ac knowl edg ments

Dirk Knaust (Statoil, Stavanger, Nor way) is kindly thanked for his sug ges tions for im prov ing the manu script. We also thank an anon y mous re viewer.

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